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[baldo]

There are 116 NEW functionality items in MC26 alone. See attached file. More in earlier versions.

None of them are of interest?

No, Not really.

Speaking for myself, unless  I can see or hear or notice an improvement in my own user experience, I dont care.

There is a saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". 

I am assuming that you guys actually listen to your users/ paying customers and ask them what they would like to see in the product. Otherwise you are just spending your resources on building something that no one really cares about. 

I certainly agree with one of the previous posts about the user interface not changing.  Improve it, make it look sexier WITHOUT sacrificing sound quality or functionality.

I only care about those three things, in order of priority:
1 Sound quality
2 Functionality
3 look and feel.

This post was not meant to be a rant but a genuine request for more information.

I hope that the powers that be are listening to what the users and paying customers are telling them.

[JimH]

No, Not really.

Speaking for myself, unless  I can see or hear or notice an improvement in my own user experience, I dont care.

There is a saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". 

I am assuming that you guys actually listen to your users/ paying customers and ask them what they would like to see in the product. Otherwise you are just spending your resources on building something that no one really cares about. 

I certainly agree with one of the previous posts about the user interface not changing.  Improve it, make it look sexier WITHOUT sacrificing sound quality or functionality.

I only care about those three things, in order of priority:
1 Sound quality
2 Functionality
3 look and feel.

This post was not meant to be a rant but a genuine request for more information.

I hope that the powers that be are listening to what the users and paying customers are telling them.

1.  Sound Quality -- It's hard to improve on perfect reproduction of the original.  You can alter the sound if that's what you want.  DSP, VST, etc.

2.  Functionality -- Your suggestion?

3.  Look and feel -- MC is an engine.  You can wrap your own GUI around it.  There are many such solutions available already, starting with remotes like JRemote and Panel.

I personally despise applications that move functionality around in the interest of "enhancing" the user interface.  Windows itself is a good example of changes in the user interface sacrificing usability for appearance.

[baldo]

I'll move this to a new thread.

1.  Sound Quality -- It's hard to improve on perfect reproduction of the original.  You can alter the sound if that's what you want.  DSP, VST, etc.

2.  Functionality -- Your suggestion?

3.  Look and feel -- MC is an engine.  You can wrap your own GUI around it.  There are many such solutions available already, starting with remotes like JRemote and Panel.

I personally despise applications that move functionality around in the interest of "enhancing" the user interface.  Windows itself is a good example of changes in the user interface sacrificing usability for appearance.

1 - Agreed and Thanks. Keep up the good work. I have decent converters in my soundcards so I just expect MC to do good job of utilising these. I am sure it does.

2 - I only have on really and I have already made that. Talk/listen to other users, they may have ideas that I dont.  No body knew they needed an iphone until Apple came along and showed us what it could do.

3 - Where can I get other GUIs? I dont know about these. I use JRemote on my iphone as a remote control. Its ok, not great but it does a basic job.

I agree, don't move around functionality and call it enhancements, that's just insulting and annoying.  Thing is, you might be building so much fucntionality into it that we are just not aware of because either we did not need it or we were not aware of it.  To remedy the latter, TELL us what you have done, educate us on how to get the most out of your product.  This is really the job of your marketing dept to educate us users so that we get the maximum out of your product that you keep updating and improving.

As I said, I have not updated since v22 and I continue to use MC on all three of my machines.

[baldo]

3 - Where can I get other GUIs? I dont know about these. I use JRemote on my iphone as a remote control. Its ok, not great but it does a basic job.

Anything??

[JimH]

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Remotes

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Simplified_Interface

It might help if you describe what you want.

[Daniel Warner]

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for at least a general roadmap of what to expect in v27. You haven't given us much time to decide before the discount ends so can you give us an idea of what you're working on?

[The Grudge]

Personally I will even do upgrades from time to time simply to provide JRiver development team the money they need to innovate and improve. I think that it is acceptable that companies need periodic capital injections. Saying that I will make one what I feel is an important suggestion for MC to incorporate. I have always wanted on the fly playlist creation, but session specific and dynamic. Here is what I mean.

Many times I want to create a playlist dynamically as I am going so that while a track is playing I start to think about say the next three tracks that I would like to here. I would like to have it so that I can go through my library, while a track is playing and add as many tracks as I can, and the order that I select them in is respected.

As it stands now I can right click and use the play next item, but each time the most recently selected track overrides the previously selected track as opposed to the behaviour I want to see where it would build a cue adding each successively selected track after the one previously selected. In essence, allowing me to build an on the fly playlist, but not one that needs to be saved, just a session specific playlist.

This is actually how I use JRiver much of the time and currently I find it a little cumbersome to create my on the fly playlist so for me this would be an excellent feature and one that I suspect is simply enough to implement. It is essentially creating a dynamically created user array so should be pretty basic to implement.

[JimH]

Thanks for the kind thought.

What you want is there.  Right click a track and choose More Play Options.

[billg]

Here are some things I'd like. But I'm only interested in audio. I know JRiver has extensive "video" functionality but it's not what I'm mad about. Most recent major upgrades have been mostly concerned with video. If there were more improvements in audio fidelity and functionality then I'd be more inclined to upgrade too.

I want better sounding playback. No I don't know how to achieve it. But there's more to it than bitperfect reproduction and memory play, good though they are. I believe in reducing computer services not needed for audio, reducing latency in various ways, refreshing files, lower jitter, etc. You can argue it's not JRiver's job to do this.

I want to edit metadata and add new metadata fields. I know there are ways to do this in JRiver but feel it could be made easier. For example a grid-like presentation of selected tracks where we can change multiple rows at a time, eg to change the genre of 3 tracks by selecting the cells and pasting.

I'd like additional metadata (say integration with allmusic) to get relationships between artists/tracks/genres etc. I'd like to navigate based on metadata. Eg I listen to a track, I list the players and select to see what else the guitarist has played on and then play a selected track. I'd pay extra for this but not roon prices, and I want better fidelity.

Reporting: I want to be sql to interrogate the library and output the results to a csv. I never looked at the internal format of the library but maybe an api could be produced. Ok I can fiddle with smartlists but sql is (mostly) unambiguous and there are tutorials.

I used to love squeezbox ease of finding and replaying internet radio stations. Why can't jriver do this?

Oh, and the wiki - where knowledge is posted, lost and not updated. This is a serious wealth of knowledge that has been let slip over the years. You JRiver guys spend a lot of time helping us in the forum, but there's never enough time.

I'm a long-time member of the JRiver community and only want to help it become even better.

Well you did ask....

[Awesome Donkey]

The problem with audio is, it's hard to improve on output that's already bit-perfect. I mean it's bit-perfect output, how can that possibly be improved? It can't outside of adding DSP/VST/etc.

Now, improvements to existing audio features is doable. Things like improved VST support (including VST3 support), DSF to DFF or vice versa repackaging when converting versus resampling them (which goes through a PCM stage), improved DSD-to-PCM low-pass filter options, etc. would be welcome improvements for audio-only users (including myself).

[JimH]

... the wiki - where knowledge is posted, lost and not updated. This is a serious wealth of knowledge that has been let slip over the years. You JRiver guys spend a lot of time helping us in the forum, but there's never enough time.

Please start a thread with details on what you think isn't up to date.  It's pretty accurate.

[timwtheov]

The AllMusic stuff is achievable with MCUtils (search the forum). I use it all the time, though I will say a) it takes a bit of time to set up and b) it can be a bit slow if you're tagging an album at a time (the software itself isn't slow, but if you have a large library, and you want all the metadata you can get, then you've got to go album-by-album). It's pretty great to get all that metadata, however, for "styles" and "moods," etc., for smartlists and views.

Here's an image:

https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/134ECAA6-6ED4-4647-81D9-0F261024D80F/Tags/

[buckeyewalt]

I know nobody wants to address having a recording feature on the audio side so how about this.

Have all of the available DSP, VST, support available somewhere with an explanation of what each filter does.

Some are not gifted audiophiles (like my self) but like to listen to good musical reproduction and to be quite honest, I have no idea of what some of these things do but I can tell the difference when I listen to them being applied to my music.

If MC is bit perfect like you say it is, the only other thing you can do is enhancements to the music with the proper directions for use.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     and a recording feature😉

[JimH]

If MC is bit perfect like you say it is, the only other thing you can do is enhancements to the music with the proper directions for use.

My own opinion is that you can't "enhance" perfect.  You can change it, but you can't enhance it.

MC has some DSP features that also let you change the audio.

[Foggyroad]

My own opinion is that you can't "enhance" perfect.  You can change it, but you can't enhance it.

MC has some DSP features that also let you change the audio.

JRiver's DSP features are great - I've been using PEQ for multi-way active speakers for many years - however, it desperately needs graphical representation of x-overs/eq built using DSP. This might also help those who are new to DSP - being able to see what you have just input would be so useful to people whether you are trying to tame a single room resonance or building a complex 4-way crossover.

[ths61]

JRiver's DSP features are great - I've been using PEQ for multi-way active speakers for many years - however, it desperately needs graphical representation of x-overs/eq built using DSP. This might also help those who are new to DSP - being able to see what you have just input would be so useful to people whether you are trying to tame a single room resonance or building a complex 4-way crossover.

@Foggyroad,

FWIW, you can use the ANALYZER display with a PINK NOISE track playing on infinite REPEAT with the AMPS turned OFF to protect your speakers.  The ANALYZER display will show a trace for all enabled channels as well as an aggregated trace.  The resolution of the ANALYZER display does NOT appear to accurately represent steep XO slopes, but does give you a good indication of the points and what is going on with channels, frequency and volume.

This is why I would like to have the ANALYZER to have it's own window so you can see changes in realtime as you make them in the Parametric Equalizer and other control panels.

This display is the outgoing signal and does not include any alterations made downstream and by the room which would require a mic input and amps and speakers to be active.

HTH

[ths61]

The problem with audio is, it's hard to improve on output that's already bit-perfect. I mean it's bit-perfect output, how can that possibly be improved? It can't outside of adding DSP/VST/etc.

Now, improvements to existing audio features is doable. Things like improved VST support (including VST3 support), DSF to DFF or vice versa repackaging when converting versus resampling them (which goes through a PCM stage), improved DSD-to-PCM low-pass filter options, etc. would be welcome improvements for audio-only users (including myself).

Is there any room for improvement with the MC WMD to provision for higher quality music services (e.g. match sample rates without having Windows up/down converting it) ? 

Is there any room for improvement with sample rate conversions besides using SOX ?

[Foggyroad]

@Foggyroad,

FWIW, you can use the ANALYZER display with a PINK NOISE track playing on infinite REPEAT with the AMPS turned OFF to protect your speakers.  The ANALYZER display will show a trace for all enabled channels as well as an aggregated trace.  The resolution of the ANALYZER display does NOT appear to accurately represent steep XO slopes, but does give you a good indication of the points and what is going on with channels, frequency and volume.

This is why I would like to have the ANALYZER to have it's own window so you can see changes in realtime as you make them in the Parametric Equalizer and other control panels.

This display is the outgoing signal and does not include any alterations made downstream and by the room which would require a mic input and amps and speakers to be active.

HTH

Thanks @ths61 - yes, I'm fully aware of what can be done with Analyzer (I've been using JRiver for many years), but it is a rather crude representation of what PEQs have been set. Analyzer is useful, but it does not do the job that is required when implementing complex multi-way x-overs/eq.

I also have Acourate and can build my x-over/eq in that (where I can visually see what I am building) and implement them in JRiver using convolution. But I would rather use JRiver's PEQ because with 8 channels it is using far less PC resources than convolution and it is very simple to make a minor change eg activate a shallow shelving filter to remove some harshness on a particular recording. With a decent graphing function one can see how adjacent frequencies are affected when small (or large!) changes are made. As it is now with no graphing function you are left guessing unless you measure the transfer function using REW, for example. Measuring the transfer function is of course the most accurate way to see what has actually been implemented in PEQ, but I don't want to do that everytime I make a minor change.

 

[palavra]

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for at least a general roadmap of what to expect in v27. You haven't given us much time to decide before the discount ends so can you give us an idea of what you're working on?

I couldn't agree more. What is in version 27? I've asked the same. How will 27 improve user's experience?

[Awesome Donkey]

Features added to MC27 haven't been announced yet, but it's in active development right now. My guess is JRiver is waiting until MC27 is closer to release until a New in MC27 topic appears listing some of the new features in MC27, which is edited/added to as the development cycle progresses.